A01=Leonard Barkan
Allusion
Analogy
Anecdote
Apples and oranges
Ars Poetica (Horace)
Author_Leonard Barkan
Bibliography
Category=ABA
Category=DSA
Cimabue
Classroom
De pictura
Decorum
Discobolus
Divine Comedy
Ekphrasis
Emblem
Epigram
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Erwin Panofsky
Fetishism
Figure of speech
Giotto
Horace
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Iconography
Iconology
Ideology
Illustration
Imagination
Institutio Oratoria
Johns Hopkins University
Literary criticism
Literature
Metaphor
Mimesis
Narrative
New York University
Northwestern University
Ovid
Painting
Paragone
Parian marble
Parrhasius (painter)
Perspective (graphical)
Petrarch
Poetry
Post-structuralism
Praxiteles
Princeton University
Publication
Purgatorio
Quotation mark
Renaissance art
Rhapsode
Rhetoric
Terence
The Art of Painting
The Other Hand
Theatre
Theory
Thucydides
University of California
Usage
Ut pictura poesis
Verisimilitude (fiction)
Visual artifact
Visual arts
Washington University in St. Louis
William Shakespeare
Work of art
Writer
Writing
Zeuxis
Product details
- ISBN 9780691141831
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 25 Nov 2012
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Why do painters sometimes wish they were poets--and why do poets sometimes wish they were painters? What happens when Rembrandt spells out Hebrew in the sky or Poussin spells out Latin on a tombstone? What happens when Virgil, Ovid, or Shakespeare suspend their plots to describe a fictitious painting? In Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures, Leonard Barkan explores such questions as he examines the deliciously ambiguous history of the relationship between words and pictures, focusing on the period from antiquity to the Renaissance but offering insights that also have much to say about modern art and literature. The idea that a poem is like a picture has been a commonplace since at least ancient Greece, and writers and artists have frequently discussed poetry by discussing painting, and vice versa, but their efforts raise more questions than they answer. From Plutarch ("painting is mute poetry, poetry a speaking picture") to Horace ("as a picture, so a poem"), apparent clarity quickly leads to confusion about, for example, what qualities of pictures are being urged upon poets or how pictorial properties can be converted into poetical ones.
The history of comparing and contrasting painting and poetry turns out to be partly a story of attempts to promote one medium at the expense of the other. At the same time, analogies between word and image have enabled writers and painters to think about and practice their craft. Ultimately, Barkan argues, this dialogue is an expression of desire: the painter longs for the rich signification of language while the poet yearns for the direct sensuousness of painting.
Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His books include Michelangelo: A Life on Paper (Princeton); Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture; The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism; and Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome.
